My daughter upgraded her cell phone, and so her Samsung Hype (A256) became superfluous. This gave me the opportunity to try my hand at unlocking a cell phone.
I found www.cellunlocker.net and sent them the phone's IMEI number and the $7. ($7 is a lot less than the $50 charged by our national cell phone companies for unlocking phones!) The IMEI number is the number that uniquely identifies every cell phone. It is short for "International Mobile Equipment Identity" and you can learn more from Wikipedia. You usually find the number inside the phone, under the battery.
After a day or so, I received an email with the unlocking number, plus six pages of instructions. It's not that it takes a lot of steps to unlock a phone; it's that CellUnlocker.Net provides instructions for 15 groups of Samsung phone models, plus extra instructions should the phone freeze after unlocking.
The Hype A256 was not listed, and so I tried the instructions for "All Other Samsung." It didn't unlock. I wrote CellUnlocker.Net's tech support, but after two months still haven't heard from them.
My other kids needed to bring their phones in for warrenty work, which typically takes six weeks with Rogers. I thought I would try again to unlock the unused phone. This time I picked a set of instructions at random... and it worked!
For the Samsung Hype (model A256), type the following:
#7465625*638*
enter the unlocking code provided by the unlocking service
#
Typical Unlocking Instructions
The instructions for unlocking a phone are usually similar:
1. Turn off phone, remove back, remove battery, and then remove existing SIM card.
2. Insert a SIM card that does not work; ie, one from another network.
3. Turn on phone, and wait for it to start up. It will complain about a bad SIM or other such message.
4. Enter a string of numbers and punctuation, as if you were entering a phone number. Often, these begin with # and/or *, have a series of number specific to the phone, followed by the unlocking code, and end with more # and/or *.
5. Phone should then announce it has been unlocked, and the "non-working" SIM card should now work. You can make phone calls.
Important Note
Just because a phone is unlocked does not mean it will work with your cell phone company. In some cases, phones do not work because they do no support the cell phone company's communications protocols, such as CDMA (Telus, Verizon) and GSM (Rogers, AT&T). CDMA phones don't have SIM cards.
In other cases, the cell phone model itself is not supported. For example, the Samsung Hype does not work with my cell provider, Mobilicity. But the unlocked phone works with Rogers and its low-cost brand, Fido.
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